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Monday, December 17, 2007

I wanted to say thanks to Bryan for organizing the Social Media Breakfast today and everyone that I talked to for being supportive and engaging. I thoroughly enjoy being a part of the social media community in Boston.

And, I'll add a short re-cap of the breakfast topic that Geoff Livingston did a great job starting a conversation among the group this morning.

Audiences, Communities, Stakeholders -- What are we?

The first point that I really liked was that we are all people.

Second, tying this concept back into the participation model (1% rule) I think that the labels could be more appropriately applied to individuals than to groups. The 80-90% who only consume content fits the audience label, the 10-19% who interact with content fit the community label, and the 1% who create content are creating stakes for themselves in the endeavor.

Third, the people engaging in social media right now at events like the SMB and SMC are in the top 1% and 10%. We are going to be the influencers that will drive social media adoption. Which means you have to build relationships with the people we want to 'get it.'

I changed the sub-head of my blog to "The Relationship is the Medium."

I've been thinking about this for a while, it's part of the reason that I started my blog. As social media gets more ingrained into our consciousness and normal way of life, the channels we use (email, forums, IM, blogs, twitter, seesmic, facebook, etc.) become become irrelevant. The media through which information flows are our relationships.

This topic has a much longer blog post waiting to come out, as soon as I can figure out how to write it.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Google's looking to take another step towards "organiz[ing] the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

There's already lots of commentary about the concept. And I think I'm falling more on the side of the skeptics. I'm no fan of Wikipedia (though I'm starting to be convinced) but ownership of articles isn't the reason I question articles veracity.

My main concern with the new site is that if multiple articles exist on any given topic, Google assumes the position of expert by ranking the results according to which should be the most relevant. While Google is still seen by many as doing no evil, positioning themselves as the method for discovery is meaningless because it's inside a walled garden. Of course, Google is going to be used to search for articles, it's your only choice. But that doesn't mean that it's the best system for ranking the content.This seems like a blunder that Google should be making. When you open your site up to user-generated content you have to also give your users the power to decide what is relevant to them. By retaining control of that, Google's suffocating half the value that the site could have.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see what happens with this. The first hurdle is going to be getting people to show up and write. Has Google shown up too late to the party to get substantial participation?

Update 12/15: I read over the announcement again about Google's inclusion of "Community Tools" (comments, suggested edits, user rankings) but if they are controlling the algorithm that determines who shows up in the search results, then I still don't see this as really providing the community with much value.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The launch of Media Bullseye has been gettingcovered. I think that this is a great idea and they've already gotten some excellent voices to contribute.

But, my question about their positioning it as a magazine is who does that redefine?

Magazines are long-lead, long-form publications. They don't often break news but take a deeper look into news and trends that are important at the time. Magazines are becoming more niche as the Internet has allowed people to coalesce around specific interests. The circulations do not have to be as big because the know their audience. But, for the most part, they still follow traditional journalist values.

Bloggers have been defining themselves over the last few years as... well, not journalists. (Aside: When I started my personal blog 4 years ago, blogging was often considered 'citizenjournalism.' I made a decision not to go that route and kept a personal journal instead.) Blogs don't follow the inversed pyramid. They want to be accurate but are also willing to let their voice (and opinions) come through. And, of course, they put conversation with their readers at the forefront.

So, what happens when you create a publication staffed with bloggers? Who gets redefined?

Update 12/6: I had a chance to talk with Chip Griffin and Sarah Wurrey at the SNCR Symposium. Chip brought up the interesting point that one of the reasons he started Media Bullseye was to bring traditional PR folks into the online space. By giving them a presentation (and name) that was more familiar to them, he hopes to encourage engagement by audiences not typically reading online content.So in exploring who might get re-defined by this venture, I missed option C. It's the audience that will be changed through engagement. This would be a noteworthy example of the power of relationships in new media. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Monday, December 3, 2007

I have no evidence but that will not stop me from moving boldly forward.

When I logged into facebook tonight to do some follow-up work on my Coke group, I noticed that I was no longer a fan of Coca-Cola.

Thinking they may have booted me, I tried searching for them. The Page wasn't in the results.

I tried going back to Technobabble 2.0 to get the original Page URL. Still nothing.

But, I did notice that the original Coke site has an image that one of the new Coke facebook Pages is using. In fact, I think it's the official Coke profile on facebook. Which is interesting because...

Because the original Technobabble post is on Nov. 7. I created my group on Nov. 26th. And Coca-Cola joined Facebook on Nov. 28th. (And currently only has 2 Fans.)

I'm hearby taking partial credit for my facebook group pushing Coca-cola to remove their original facebook page and put up a new one. I'm sure it had nothing to do with this.

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About Me

I am a marketer. The role of content as a marketing tool as increased with the rise of Internet search and social media. As audiences continue to fragment, companies will need to continue to focus on creating diverse content that can be published and shared broadly.